Wild Honey in India - on Location with Kurinji Flowers

This morning I was rereading a short story from the Discovering Diamonds: Stories from a Song series — a collection of pieces inspired by music and written by authors from around the world. The story was The Hunter written by the award‑winning novelist Jean Gill, who lives in France and, among many other things, keeps bees.

I really enjoyed reading her fantasy tale of a brave woman scaling a cliff on which her father had perished the previous year, in order to harvest the wild honey for her tribe. It’s a very atmospheric story and I discovered from it that honey from the nectar of rhododendrons is much prized for its hallucinogenic properties! Read Jean's story here

As I was enjoying The Hunter, I remembered I had written years ago about harvesting wild honey myself. It was in my second novel Kurinji Flowers and is part of a pivotal scene in the book. I was inspired to write the scene when I came across some wild honey hives high up in trees when I was finishing the book on a research trip to India in 2013.

If you’re curious, here’s a short extract from Kurinji Flowers:

We got down from the horses and walked a short way into the forest, and there they were—the hives, hanging like sacks from the branches, high in the tree, about half a dozen in each of two neighbouring trees. Sankaram's brother was lying along one of the main branches high in one of the trees. He'd climbed about twenty feet, barefoot, a dangerous task. Mr Mistry took my arm, and pulled me back behind a thicket to watch without getting too close.

'I don't want the bees attacking and stinging you. Sankaram and his brother will be stung, but they're used to it. Years of practice.'

'Is it painful?'

He laughed. 'I got too close once and was stung and, believe me, it hurts like hell.'

We watched Sankaram clamber up the tree to join his brother, carrying a bundle of slightly damp leaves. When he reached the crown of the tree, he set fire to the leaves, held the bundle under the entrance to the hive and let the smoke drive the bees out. Meanwhile, the brother chopped a hole in the biggest hive and reached his hand in to grasp the honey. All the while, bees were attacking the pair of them in a demented frenzy. I wanted to cry out and beg them to stop, but Mistry whispered to me that by now they were immune to the poison, if not to the pain. After a while, the two men shimmied back down the tree and pulled on a rope to lower a basket in which they'd placed the honey.

Sankaram, smiling, despite his stings, took a honeycomb and wrapped it in a couple of leaves and handed it to Mistry, who said, 'He wants you to have it. A souvenir of the day.' (Extract from Kurinji Flowers)

What struck me, rereading the passage now, is a coincidence I couldn’t possibly have been aware of at the time. In my second Ceylon novel, The Tea Planter's Secret, which isn't published yet, Stella travels to India to study the Toda people — a hill tribe known for gathering honey in this way. It’s one of those curious moments when writing circles back on itself, revealing connections you didn’t consciously plan, but which were quietly waiting there all along.

Kurinji Flowers is the only book (apart from the memoir part of Prisoner from Penang) that I've written in the first person. I loved writing it – probably because it gave me an excuse to go back to India to finish the book.

Here's a photo I took of the tree hives when I was in India.

If you'd like to find out more, there's more about Kurinji Flowers on the Separation series page – a collection of four standalone novels. Or you can buy it or read on Kindle Unlimited by clicking the button.

Buy or read on Amazon